Should Ireland leave the Euro?

After the heady patriotic stuff of yesterday's demo in Dublin's O'Connell Street, it is back to dealing with reality this morning. The Sunday Independent is forthrightly raising the possibility that the only option left to Ireland is to leave the Euro. The argument appears to be that even with the EU/IMF bailout the Irish economy does not have the capacity to generate the levels of growth to get us out of hock anywhere within the next ten years or so. Neither the economy nor the people could endure the levels of hardship and penury that on-going austerity may inflict. The conclusion drawn is that it is only by leaving the Euro and reverting to an IR£ Mark II that we can regain the kind of fiscal control needed. Severe devaluation of a new Irish punt would be the mechanism to build new growth. Apparently the emerging economies, like Brazil, are using this particular strategy to fuel indigenous growth.

The arguments against leaving the Euro are also powerful. As one commentator on politics.ie noted, leaving the Euro would leave us unprotected in the struggle with the markets. Foreign direct investment that saw our membership of the Eurozone as a decided commercial advantage would take flight. Indigenous industry could take a generation to catch up with places like Sweden or Denmark. Our economy would revert to the bipolar Anglo-Irish (the geographical kind) relationship.

And, of course, holidays on the Costa del Sol would be out of our financial reach. A step too far?

New Campaign against Inhuman Treatment of Children

A new global campaign to combat the cruel and inhuman treatment of children and minors within national juvenile justice systems is getting under way at the international level. To find out more about this campaign go to the CRIN (Child Rights Information Network) website.

And has it not always been thus ...

When I was a young boy in primary school in the Christian Brothers, Templemore, County Tipperary some fifty years ago, we always railed against the tragic and hapless plight of the Irish whenever we decided to make a bid for independence, or even maintain it. First, there was the lamentable performance of the various petty kings during the time of Diarmuid Mac Murrough of Leinster when faced with the prospect of a Norman invasion. Then, there was the inability of the Irish chieftains to band together in solidarity against the Tudors. Come 1798 and the multiple ill-fated French invasion attempts, compounded by a total lack of coordination among the United Irishmen, we once again displayed our predilection for local and selfish interests. Let us not speak of Parnell and all of that lamentable carry-on. And, lest we forget, 1916 wasn’t exactly a shining example of solidarity either. So it is with his background that I read with interest Justin O’Brien’s recent article in the November 24th Irish Times, commenting on the total failure of the Irish political elite, the chattering classes and the academic analysts to provide any kind of a united front either during the Celtic Tiger years or in the present sorry state in which we find ourselves.

O’Brien notes:

It is time for some hard thinking. It is time for a full and frank admission of abject political, corporate, regulatory, and academic failure. This centres not in the handling of the boom but in the increasingly pathetic attempts by each sector to advance solutions. These, in fact, serve only to enhance the self-interest of each specific community of experts rather than the collective good.

A new Ireland: is it possible?

While everyone yesterday was transfixed by the news coverage coming out of Ireland the accelerating political crisis there, a gentler and more collegial event was taking place on the Isle of Man. There, the British-Irish Inter-parliamentary Council was having one of its regular meetings. No doubt there was much commentary on events a few miles to the west across the Irish Sea. No doubt that the British decision to provide some goodwill bilateral aid to a "friend in need" (George Osborne in the Commons yesterday). However what made the news in today's Irish Times was some comments from an Icelandic politician, Mr Hjorvar, a member of the Icelandic Parliamentary Council.

Mr. Hjorvar said: “There are opportunities in crisis to reset your values, to rearrange how you organise things in your society, to do things better." He went on outline how Iceland is following through on the popular demand for a total re-imagining of Icelandic society. The Icelandic parliament is putting the finishing touches to a new Icelandic Constitution. The tax regime is being returned to its factory default following the catastrophic outcome from the recent adoption of the discredited 'free money' approach advocated by the gungho liberal soft regulation economists. There is a recognition that a departure from traditional social values and a commitment to societal solidarity established the kind of permissive ethos that allowed the irresponsible free-wheeling consumerist culture to flourish.

Hopefully, the Irish parliamentarians who were present at the meeting will have been taking notes.

Christianity and the Religions

We are living in an era of a rediscovery of the religions. Not just 'a religion' but the plurality of the religions. Here in Ireland we are now living in a culture which has become more diverse from a religious and cultural perspective. On my own street I pass each day Muslims, mostly young immigrant men from North Africa. Ten years ago the street presented a wholly monocultural and monofaith appearance. The engagement with Islam has been forced upon us. But it is also welcome challenge to our own somewhat sterile Christian faith.

The new encounter with the world religions, and Islam in particular, brings with it new questions. We grew up in an era when we believed that Christianity was THE religion, in fact, if one were a Catholic, one accepted as a defining doctrine of faith that Christianity is the singular and complete divine revelation to the world. It is difficult for us to get our heads around this.

That is why it is refreshing when one comes across a Christian writer and theologian who bring some light to bear on the question of where Christianity fits with the panoply of the world religions. Just this morning, for example, I read the following passage in Cynthia Bourgeault's in The Wisdom Jesus: "If you were to imagine the great world religions like the colors of a rainbow, each one witnessing in a particular way to some essential aspect of the divine fullness, Christianity would unquestionably hold down the corner of incarnation - by which I mean the vision of God in full solidarity with the created wolrd, fully at home within the conditions of finitude, so that form itself poses no impediment to divinity."

Ideology or Theology?

But the suggestion that Catholic theology is just another ideology roaming the marketplace of ideas ultimately only serves to diminish the transcendent truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is a quote from a comment on the NCR blog in an article on the recent election of Archbishop Dolan as the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). John Allen, the respected analyst and commentator with the NCR, has pointed out that with Archbishop Dolan’s election the Bernardin era of the ‘seamless garment’ approach to moral teaching has ended. From now on the ethical and theological teaching of the US Bishops will be carefully aligned with the narrowed perspectives of Vatican views on abortion, same-sex relationships, civil partnerships, and liturgical matters. It is difficult not to see in this narrowed perspective the imposition of a Roman ‘ideology’ on Catholicism in the West. Equally, it is difficult to see how Benedict XVI’s justified critique of ‘aggressive secularisation’ can be carried through in any credible fashion without a broad vision of how the Church enters into dialogue with the secular world. Transcendence and one-dimensional thinking do not sit well together.

Could the European Union collapse because of Ireland?

This week the President of the European Union (yes, it does have a President!)m Herman van Rompoy did a ten-second summary of the current financial situation in which he linked Ireland’s financial difficulties, the fate of the Euro and the possible collapse of the European Union itself. The ultimate domino effect. Could it happen? Yes, it could. Only now are commentators (and ordinary citizens such as myself) beginning to wake up to the inconvenient truth that the real problem is the Euro itself. A single currency presupposes unitary and consolidated financial and economic control. We don’t have this in Europe. We have a very cumbersome and inflexible set of relationships among the member states overseen by the Council of Ministers and the European Central Bank. No wonder the Germans are worried.

Alister Heath, a UK economist and commentator, reminds of the extent of the problem when reflecting on the current crisis: “The EU’s treaties are not worth the paper they are written on, especially the nonsense about fiscal sustainability; the euro is a giant with feet of clay; monetary union will either lead to fiscal centralisation and destroy democracy in small countries or break up completely. Another absurdity: as part of the moves to force banks all over the world to hold more liquid assets, they have all been told to buy vast amounts of supposedly safe government bonds. This wasn’t exactly the cleverest strategy. What a mess.”